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Hotmail Servers Shut Down by Code Red
An Anonymous Coward writes: "SF Gate has this story about Code Red taking down some of Microsoft's Hotmail servers. That's funny." So is Code Red a problem yet? Meanwhile my sircams have stopped, except for 2 people who mail me a hundred or more a day. Thank god for filters, but if I had a monthly bandwidth cap, I'd be pissed.
These guys are good at making money...
Actually, they're not that good at making money. They've coded themselves into a hole where people don't want to upgrade their software to new versions every year or two. Windows 98 or 2000, Office 2000 and Internet Explorer 5.5 do everything the typical office worker needs. It's the same on the server side. Most offices aren't looking for new features. They want to reduce support costs. That doesn't translate well into writing more checks to Microsoft.
For a long time Microsoft had no real professional services arm. They left that to all the independant MCP's. Now they're catching on to what IBM, SAP, Oracle, and everyone else figured out at least 5-10 years ago. Software sales is only part of the pie. Service and support can be a big revenue source, especially if your software isn't easy to support. Now Microsoft is building up their professional services arm.